The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1887-06-01
HOME AGAIN.
A Wandering Humorist Settles Down and
Takes Account OF Stock-His Hammered
China and Crackle Crystal.

A Wandering Humorist Settles Down and
Takes Account OF stock-His Hammered
China and Crackie Crystal.
IBurdette. in Brooklyn Eagle.l
1t is, indeed, pleasant to settle down
to housekeeping again after few years
of life in every sort of hostelry, from
an open face camp in the Adirondacks
to New York hotel. There are so
many pleasant surprises in store for
one, when one takes ones Lares and
Penates, with all the appurtenances
thereunto appertaining, from the dark
solitude of the gloomy store-room in
which they have passed a few years in
sentiment and reflection. You think
of so many more things than you say,
as you unpack the barrels of hammered
china and crackle ware. All our china
is real hammered, and oil our crystal
Is the genuine crackle. Some OF
our fragile ware 1 hammered myself,
some the truckman hammered, and
some was hammered when the cask
fell down the elevator we'll at the
store-room. / am a fair to middling
lightweight packer, but L am not
genius. Consequently, it never occur
red to me, when 1 packed O bale OF
pressed hay around one tumbler, to
pack against the contingency OF a fall
of six stories. But, then, L never stored
before, and knew not the ways of the
storage warehouse. / do now. If ever
/ store again-but-excuse these tears.
l have now nothing to store. Nothing
save only one stove leg. And it doesn't
1NlA 81
my things in the warehouse. But it is
whole; hasn't crack or flaw In 1t, and
so l will keep it. / have no earthly
use for it, but it does my soul good to
see something whole about the new
house besides the ones L made in the
wall hunting for q hidden scantling
with hammer and picture nail. L
found q scantling once. Probed for it
with q gimlet until l got hold of it.
Then / went into the next room for a
hammer and picture nail. When L
came back, if somebody had not moved
that scantling, | am heather from
Nowgong. L haven't time to chase
scantling all around house. So /
drove the nail into the lath and hung
the picture. l am now one pi ture
short in that room, but plastered the
hole in the wall so neatly you can't see
where it happened.
So many little things turn up as you
uncover your long hidden treasures.
hear my sister weeping in the next
room for one of them now. She brings
her piteous face into my Lair and says,
in the tone of woman who is awearv
of life, II have found another moth.
/ say, "Why, you found six yesterday;
what do you want of another?" She
goes away wringing her hands. l sup
pose she found this one to bring the
count up to the perfect number. Why
do women-God bless them-go about
hunting for things they don't want to
find?
Only the other day, while ! was writ
ing an "Ode to Washington, and was
trying to think of a rhyme for Ratchet,
she called me down stairs. She said;
Il believe there is something alive in
that barrel" l said in my native Ian
guage, which always comes back to me
in moments of anger, a w-w-w-w?"
The idiom is untranslatable. Only
men who have used it know what it
means; to all others it is the Unknow-
able. / stood on my head in that bar
rel to grasp at the straw and crush her
idle fears, and may l never see the
penitentiary if a procession of st lrve-
ling mice didn't stampede up my back
and Jump off my waving legs. did
not come out of that barrel so hastily
as you might suppose. Ny intention
was to come out rather abruptly, but /
checked it. A nail foot long, which
ran into my back eighteen inches,
helped me to pause. They had to
knock the other head of the barrel in
and let me crawl through that way. l
am now a teetotaller, but had nail
that day that for staying Qualities beat
any "neat Ticker" that er introduced
fallen man to the james-jambs.